3.24.2013

Meditación al subir escalera mecánica / Natasha Tiniacos

Meditation On A Rising Escalator

I watch every step I don’t take
on the corrugated invoice of the years
that contracts and dilates
like the chest of an exhausted bird.
I won’t look away from the zenith
since the emptiness weaves laboriously toward my body
to take me to false paradise
and its rushed nakedness behind fitting rooms.
Everything can wait: the labyrinthine night
that yesterday dug its task in my eyes
like a lover the scratches
on my back,
in its own time.
I will distinguish the silver cantos
and I will see in my face the fissures
of this mechanical here and now
and I will be the bird
who from the last branch
finally
sighs for what has come and gone.